One interesting thing those podcast episodes talk a fair bit about is how much the later Classical Greeks actually got right about the Bronze Age in a lot of the epics. Certainly there is a lot they got wrong too, but the scholarship has kind of swung back from basically thinking all of the details would have been anachronistically projected back into stories about times long past. That leads me to believe a lot more carried across that line then maybe we sometimes assume. Not that it means the default view should be just trusting everything those sources say, but we should be careful about being overly dismissive of them.
You gotta remember Matthew was stoned as fuck. He had the entire city in a zombie apocalypse when Jesus did the thing.
Because I’m that kind of nerd, I decided go back and retrace the sources for this. There are several, but the bottom line is scholarly consensus is that the Philistines of the Bible are the Peleset subgroup of the Sea Peoples. They were present at the Battle of the Delta in the 12th century, and were repulsed back to their bases along the Gaza coast by the Egyptian army.
Material culture and linguistics tie them to possibly central Anatolia, or Aegean regions.
Here’s a link with pictures of some of the material culture
I saw several scholars reference this book, or other sources that draw from the same resources, but I can’t personally vouch for it. However given that the book reference came from a PhD in the field, it seems legit.
Bottom line, yeah, the link of the Sea Peoples to the Philistines as one group/ tribe within the larger movement is indeed pretty solid.
Cool, thanks!
Much of Torah can be read at least in part as the attempts by what became the Jewish people to distinguish themselves from all the other folks in the area. The whole situation with Moses, Aaron, the Golden Calf, the way the tabernacle is described, the rituals and sacrifices that eventually get written down–a lot of that arguably grew out of the need to move the tribes from one sort of world view and culture to another, by giving them comparatively familiar pathways that ultimately led to something completely different.
Getting this thread back on track:
Hm…
In case you haven’t read the previous articles on this parish and think this might be an accurate statement, just keep going:
See, they were cooperating by reporting an allegation to the police who don’t have jurisdiction, and omitting the other six. No need to make extra work for them, right?
Ugh. This makes me so angry, I don’t know why I keep reading these articles. At least it seems like maybe there might be some secular justice coming.
Good, yes–find out who knew what and when, and go after them. There should be a lot more vacant bishops’ chairs today.
The bishopric in northern Vermont is still empty I think, largely because none of the possible candidates wants anything to do with it. From what my Catholic friends tell me, all the best priests in the region are perfectly happy shepherding their flocks and have no desire to become managers and accountants, which apparently is what most bishops end up doing mostly. But it does leave a void in terms of certain liturgical functions I understand…
Now, if they got hats and cool clothes like Cardinals, well, that would spark more interest.
Yeah, there’s a huge problem with priests refusing to accept appointments to the bishopric. It’s a pretty shit job, especially when you have to handle whatever abuse issues were left behind by your predecessor.
The hats are still pretty cool, though! (Just not red.)
Holy shit, it gets worse.
I thought maybe it wasn’t what you normally think of as trafficking, but that cover-ups fall under the trafficking statute or whatever… but nope, it is, in fact, that.
This Catholic Church abuse scandal is effectively bottomless. We will be learning about worse abuses and an ever-widening extent to the cover up for the rest of our lives.
You have absolutely got to be kidding me.
Nope, jail is too good for those monsters. That is horrifying. The archdiocese needs to be shuttered and sold off. There’s no coming back from that.
The bit about pool parties at a seminary to abuse minors was particularly evil. Blech.
It has become clear that the institution itself is fundamentally flawed. There’s something about the inherent power structures in the Catholic Church that can’t help but foster evil. It’s a monstrous black hole sucking down everything good the church ever did or purported to do. How can you possibly claim to be the locus of a benevolent god’s action on earth when you’ve become a rotting carcass shot through with corruption and malevolence. Morality is hypocrisy. Fellowship is peril. Worship is ghoulish. God is dead or elsewhere.
I’m all for all the reporting on this (more, please!), but just as a sidenote, does anyone know why a UK paper is going deep on stories on Catholic dioceses in Louisiana? There are undoubtedly a distressing number of cities where you can find similar stories. The Guardian has done four or five stories just in that area, some related. I guess it’s just where their correspondent is based?
I do wish the reporting would be specific on the dates of the alleged incidents. It would help to know what variety of monster these various bishops are: Did they protect priests who were actively working in their diocese at the time of abuse and shuffle them around to places they could abuse again, or did they cover up the diocese records of now-dead or senescent priests’ actions from decades before in order to protect their coffers and reputations? Both are shitty, but there is a difference. And it’s not always the case, but very often the worst accusations are from the 70s and 80s. For all the spinelessness many bishops continue to display, the culture in the Church has changed dramatically in the last couple decades.
It’s not lost on me that, like some of the reports out of Ireland as well as the Spotlight story in Boston, New Orleans is one of those places where the Church’s cultural ubiquity must have made the abuse, avoidance, and cover-ups that much more godawful.
The Guardian reports on the US constantly. It’s arguably one of the biggest media orgs for US stuff.
Would you then complain that those reports weren’t local enough as well?
This really comes off as hand-waving away child-rapes.
“Sure no one was ever held accountable, but that was before. We’re better now, trust us, the people who hid the crimes and were never held accountable.”
Also this is part of a current investigation. They had to turn over this stuff as part of a warrant. In that case the Church was protecting and paying the dude until 2020. Most of the dates involved in various thing seem to be 2000’s. Add in that the Church was hiding names and has been hiding names the entire time. They released a list in 2018. And then added a bunch of names later as their accusers came out. So maybe these things mostly happened in the past, but what isn’t in the past is the Church still protecting them anyway.
That’s not a new leaf, imo.
Welp. Full circle back to when I made this thread. Institutional abuse can’t be eliminated without also getting rid of the institution.
Not a complaint, just a curiosity. I’m glad the reporting is happening, and if they need to write five stories a day, they should!
I didn’t mean to imply that the Church is all better now. It’s not. Archbishop Aymond has a lot to answer for, and the Vatican will probably fail to hold him to account. My only point is that the grotesque mistakes being made today aren’t always identical to the ones that were made by these bishops’ predecessors.
Take the SBC, EFCL, Missouri Synod, IFBP, and a few others with, and sign me up.
Yep. And I’ll just throw out my general take on it these days: if you raise children in a rigorous supernatural (worldwide) cult that prohibits sexual expression in its leaders, you’re going to get people with aberrant sexual proclivities seeking out the leadership. Probably at first in an attempt to find a situation where it’s theoretically not an issue, but then biology takes hold.
It would probably be the best of all worlds for the filthy, filthy rich Catholic Church to just send all the clergy on a retreat four times a year so they can fuck it out.